Sri Lankan Envoy Confident China Will Provide Debt Relief
- Top diplomat received assurances requests ‘will be honored’
- Nation seeking $2.5 billion in credit support from Beijing
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Sri Lanka’s top diplomat in Beijing said he’s very confident that China will come through on $2.5 billion in financial support as the island nation’s inflation-driven crisis becomes more dire.
Ambassador Palitha Kohona said that he’d received reassurances as recently as last week from authorities in China that arrangements for loans and credit lines were progressing. Sri Lanka is looking to borrow $1 billion from Beijing so that it can repay existing Chinese loans due in July, as well as a $1.5 billion credit line to purchase goods from the world’s No. 2 economy such as textiles needed to support the apparel export industry, he said.